Sen. McCain Has Temper Tantrum Over Lack of Support for CIA’s Free Syrian Army

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, has threatened to hold up the renomination of Gen. Martin Dempsey as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff following a verbal clash between the two during a committee hearing.

McCain grilled Dempsey and Navy Adm. James Winnefeld. The senator is irritated that the United States has not entered the Syrian war or provided CIA mercenaries operating there with arms to depose the Syrian government and defeat its well-trained and disciplined army.

“I must tell both the witnesses at the onset I’m very concerned about the role you’ve played over the last two years,” groused McCain. “General Dempsey and Admiral Winnefeld, do you believe the continued cost and risk of our inaction in Syria are now worse for our national security interest than the cost and risk associated with limited military action?”

“Senator, as we’ve discussed–” Dempsey tried to respond

“I’d like to know an answer rather than a filibuster,” McCain growled. “I have six minutes and 10 seconds.”

“With all due respect, Senator, you’re asking me to agree that we’ve been inactive, and we have not been inactive,” Dempsey replied.

In May, McCain allegedly ventured to the Middle East to meet with the public relations wing of the so-called rebels, the Free Syrian Army, the mercenary unit with a dismal field record.

Remarkably, McCain said al-Nusra only accounts for 7,000 of the 100,000 mercenaries inside Syria. In fact, al-Nusra and al-Qaeda dominate the effort to topple al-Assad. “Every single day, more and more extremists flow in… They’re flowing in all the time, these extremists. But they still do not make up a sizable portion,” he said.

“Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of,” the New York Times[6] reported in April. “The Islamist character of the opposition reflects the main constituency of the rebellion,” the newspaper stated, explaining that this fact is due to “the failure of more mainstream rebel groups to secure regular arms supplies,” in other words supposed ambivalence on the part of the United States has resulted in a failure to more actively support the Free Syrian Army, initially a hodgepodge of secular Syrians who were woefully ill-prepared to fight al-Assad’s well-trained army. Earlier this month, it was reported that FSA mercenaries are defecting[7] to al-Nusra and the radical Muslim groups in record numbers.

During Dempsey’s interrogation by McCain, the general stressed the government is concerned about al-Qaeda and other Salafist groups attempting to overthrow the al-Assad regime in Syria.

In June, we reported on comments made by Sheikh Nabil Naiim[8], considered to be the historical leader of the Islamic Jihadist movement in Egypt. Naiim, who led the Safwa al-Qaeda training camp where he allegedly met Osama Bin Laden and later worked with al-Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawahiri in Yemen, said he believes al-Nusra is led by the CIA.

“I personally believe that the leader of the Nusra Army (Mohammed al-Jawlani), who declared his support for Ayman Al Zawahiri, is a CIA operative in the al-Nusra,” he said.

Naimm said he believes the CIA allowed al-Qaeda to operate in Afghanistan and were being manipulated. He told al-Nusra members in a video dispatch that it is “fighting the war in Syria on America’s behalf” and that eventually will “be called terrorists and you will be killed or put in prison just like what happened to us after Afghanistan.”

“These leaders are manipulating you, you will find yourself dying and the Americans fulfilling their goals not yours,” Naiim added.